Week End (1967, Jean-Luc Godard): Tracking Shot

"A cut from Jean-Luc Godard's "Weekend" (1967), one of the most virulent attack on bourgeois values and in this sequence a stunning attack on the role of cars in post modern societies. This movie foreshadowed the Parisian riots during the Spring of 1968, in which so many cars turned into burning barricades."

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Writers: Julio Cortazar (short story), Jean-Luc Godard

Cinematographer: Raoul Courtard

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I remember when I first saw this film, I sat in the theater to watch it again just to look at this shot. A bravura piece of filmmaking which has the advantage of actually having a thematic purpose in the picture and is not simply constructed to dazzle both critics and public alike. (As I feel much of what later Kubrick was doing with his new technical toys.) But can anyone ever diminish the contribution Coutard made to Godard's "mainstream" period (Truffaut's early films as well)? Artistically, it would seem an inseparable partnership, much the same as Sven Nykvist's incalculably valuable contributions were to Bergman's oeuvre.

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